can’t hurt me

There was some chatter on Twitter…Rudolph started talking junk and being the bone head that I am, I fired right back and we went back and forth a few times with threatening comments and gifs. In the end, we all won. Iron sharpening iron was at its finest and I will be sleeping well tonight. Eighteen men showed, 1 of them being an FNG thanks to TSquare. I started with the disclaimer and the FNG just stared me down with no fear in his eyes at all. He is married after all and there is very little that scares a married man.

We started with the Pledge then the Disclaimer. Once the disclaimer was completed, I started  with my FAVORITE PART, the warmup. After being warned about an FNG, I decided to use the warmup as a “teachable moment.” We went over the 5 core principles of F3 as part of the warmup with a new exercise called Burp-Threes. I asked for one of the principles: all I heard was ” It’s three!” so we started with 3 burpees.  They later corrected me with core principle #1 which is “it is free.” I asked for another: “It’s outdoors, rain or shine” so we then then did 6 burpees. I asked for another and heard “It’s men only” so we did 9 burpees. I asked for another, and TSquare said there were only 3 core principles……no, no, no, that is not right. Someone said “it is peer led in rotating fashion” so we did 12 burpees….DID I MENTION HOW MUCH I LOVE WARMUPS??? There were some (not so) under the breath comments and the Q was getting a bit out of breath so we semi-Omaha’d (for the sake of the FNG to show him how to count F3-style) and did 15 SSH after someone said principle #5: We end with a COT.

At this point, we split into BootCampers and PainLabbers. See Montross’ backblast done earlier today. Nice work-thanks for stepping up to Q and stepping out of Folsom to push your brothers in GasHouse.

I told the group we would head to the football field but we would climb the hill and jump the fence. All of us made it without any bloodshed or falls that I am aware of. I explained the first exercise as we lined up near the goal line: BEAR BITCH-thanks for poking the bear Rudolph. I had something else planned but it was not hard enough….Here is what BEAR BITCH is: split into groups of 3. P1 and P2 do exercises (flutter kicks or squats) while P3 bear crawls as far as he wants, keeping in mind his partners will be exercising then bear crawling to catch up. Once P3 stops, he gets up and starts doing one of the exercises (flutter kicks or squats) and one of other partners (P1 or P2) drops down and bear crawls to P3 then starts doing one of the exercises. The last man bear crawls to his partners and starts back doing exercises while P3 starts bear crawling again. The only way to move across the field is to bear crawl. When you are not bear crawling you are doing one of the exercises. My plan was more than one trip and use other exercises, however I don’t think it would have ended well, and I had plenty more planned. FYI, there is a pax whose name rhymes with Spanchorman that you do not want as your partner if you have to bear crawl. He was our first man to bear crawl and he made it across with only 1 stop.

To cool off, we did a Bojangles biscuit-run around the track with all you’ve got on the straight part then mosey or walk on the turns. Stroganoff pulled a “slow and steady” and easily cruised around in first place without looking like it was much trouble at all.

We moseyed from the field over to Sherwood Elementary School making 2 alma maters for Stroganoff. He suggested we hit one of the high schools to make it a trifecta for him but I had other plans. On the way we hit 3 speed bumps and did 3 burpees at each speed bump. We took a trip or 2 up and down the steps before getting to the field. Once at the field, we did another Bojangles (run the straights and jog/mosey the turns). We finished at the end with the hill and I told the pax we would be doing “Hillevens.” This would be similar to “Elevens” with a few modifications. Start at bottom of the hill with 1 Merkin. Run up the hill, bear crawl across the hill (probably 30 yards), run down the hill, and 10 Burpees. Each lap we go up on merkins and down on the Burpees. The bear crawl was too much for everyone except the Q (I was really barely breathing hard at all and could have done this all day without a problem at all) so I Omaha’d to just do odd number counting after the 3rd lap. This was pretty tough and the bear crawl stuff was a battery drainer for sure. Once we finished this, I gave TopHat a choice: exercise A or exercise B. I am really not sure what he picked as it made no difference to me….think he picked B and we moseyed back to the steps. Partner up and P1 does either Squats or Burpees while P2 runs up steps, at the top he does 2 burpees, then runs back down. Partners swap positions. We did not have much time so we only did a couple rounds of this and to the best of my recollection, NONE OF US DID SQUATS-WE ONLY DID BURPEES, RIGHT? #showtoknowthetruth

We moseyed to the back of the church to the newly paved parking lot for another new exercise/game called “Lunge, Lunge, Lunge, Lunge, Burpee.” We made it across the parking lot with about 5 minutes to spare….turn around and let’s do that again. An un-named pax named Stroganoff gave me a not-so-nice look but he kept on going. We reached the other end then moseyed back to start in time for a few LBCs then the bells rang and we were finished. I think I laid on the ground for a few minutes to recover.

During our bootcamp, I talked about David Goggins book called Can’t Hurt Me. From the title, I thought it was about how tough this guy is and how he can’t be physically hurt. After reading the first 2 chapters, I think it is more about how he grew up in a broken home with a broken father and suffered mental and physical torture that no young man should ever have to go through. He also has a podcast I got from PizzaMan recently where he talks about “outworking the chart” among other things. Look it up and also read his book if you have a chance-it will be time well spent.

Once I got my tired but up off the ground, we did our COT and named our FNG Clark Lee: Honey Bee. Seems like our kind of man and I will be surprised if he is not back really soon.

Thanks for the opportunity to lead and for pushing me harder than I can push myself.

Whoopee